Yunnan University
was founded in December 1922, and it started to enroll its students on April 20th
1923. The name of Yunnan University has for six times been changed in the past
80 years. It started as the privately run University of the Eastern Land and
has thus far been developed into the only key national general university in
the province of Yunnan, having trained for the society over seventeen thousand
specialized professionals in various fields. Currently, Yunnan University is
among sixty-one “211 Project” universities in China authorized by the Chinese
central government to be specially developed. Yunnan University has also been
put into the list of the key national universities for the special construction
in the national program of the Western China Development.
Yunnan University has a glorious history behind it. During the period from 1937 through 1947, the noted mathematician Professor Xiong Qinglai was invited to assume the position of President of Yunnan University, under whose leadership Yunnan University was being built following the academic format of Tshinghua University. A galaxy of the famous scholars such as Fei Xiaotong, Chu Tunan, Chen Xingshen, Hua Luogen, Yan Jici, Feng Youlan, Lu Shuxiang, etc. came to teach in Yunnan University at the invitations, thus gradually turning Yunnan University into a general university that has exerted a certain degree of academic influence at home and abroad. In 1946, Yunnan University was put into the world-known Concise Encyclopedia Britannia as one of the fifteen internationally prestigious universities in China.
Yunnan University
is situated in the city of Kunming - the provincial capital of Yunnan. It faces
the Green Lake --- a winter haunt for Siberian seagulls and next to the
Yuantong Hill --- a zoological park known for the animals and birds of rare
species, occupying an area of 426,669 square meters in which 350,000 square
meters are of the classrooms and other teaching-related buildings. The campus of
Yunnan University is covered with the green shades of exuberant ginkgoes and
cherries under which are the patches of fragrant orchids and narcissuses, and
blocks of teaching buildings, library buildings, laboratory buildings, etc.
stand out among a riot of colors of the blooming flowers. Such picturesque
surroundings in a salubrious climate of the lasting spring are really ideal for
study and other academic pursuits.
Yunnan University
has now developed into a key national institute of higher education with a
large group of academic professionals offering all the courses covered by the
complete curricula in the fields of liberal arts, law, science, technology,
economy, and management. The students currently studying on the campus of
Yunnan University have reached 19,872 persons, of whom 9,919 are the full-time
undergraduate students, 2,853 are postgraduate students (94 persons are
studying for their doctorate degrees, 684 persons are studying for their
master’s degrees, 1,842 persons are studying the advanced courses in the
postgraduate classes, 170 persons are studying for their degrees in the
specialized law classes, and 63 persons are studying for their degrees in the
advanced class organized for teachers), and 7,100 are students under the
programs for the night university and correspondence university students.
Yunnan University
retains a faculty and working staff of 2,372 persons, and among them 1,981
persons are the specialized professionals (of which 222 persons are full
professors, 409 are associate professors, and 987 are full-time instructors.)
The average age of all the employees of Yunnan University is 40. Among the
faculty of Yunnan University 683 persons are the instructors who have
respectively obtained their doctorate or master’s degrees.
Yunnan University
currently has the following fifteen schools, college and institute under its
administration: School of Economy, School of Adult Education, School of
Humanity and Liberal Arts, School of Life Science and Chemistry, School of
Information, School of Science, Institute for Development Research, School of
Occupational Technology, School of Law, School of Public Management, School of
Business Administration and Tourism Management, School of Foreign Languages,
International College of Modern Design Arts, School of Medicine, School of
International Relations, School of International Cultures, School of the
Dianchi Lake, School of Tourism Culture at Lijiang, School of Software
Engineering, etc. In these schools, college and institute there are more than thirty
teaching departments and divisions that offer sixty-five major fields of study
for the four-year programs for the undergraduates to obtain the baccalaureates.
Additionally, Yunnan University also holds sixteen centers for development and
research, twenty-five research institutes, ten research offices, and four
teaching-oriented service centers. In the above-described major fields of
study, History, Biology, Mathematical Science are established for the purpose
of training teaching and research professionals at the national level (and
Yunnan University is applying to the Ministry of Education for its approval to
set up a state-level experimental base for the comprehensive quality training
in liberal arts.) Yunnan University also has established a state-level base for
training professional teachers. Among its disciplinary branches, Yunnan
University has two key state-level disciplinary groups under the current
construction, sixteen key provincial-level disciplines, four doctorate degree
conferring points, one post-doctorate-degree-related mobile station,
forty-eight master’s degree conferring points, three specialized degree (law,
occupational education and MBA) conferring points, one state-level center for
new product research and development, and one key laboratory of the Ministry of
Education.
The library in
Yunnan University has been equipped with modern facilities of full
functionalities including the modern, multi-functional and open information
resource base. The operations of books’ access, cataloging, circulation, and
public retrieval in this library have already been put under the computerized
network management. This library houses a collection of over1.2 millions books,
some of which are the rare copies or valuable historical literatures in China.
On April 27th,
1998, the Yunnan University Science and Technology shares were issued on the
stock markets in China, and Yunnan University has become the eighth among more
than 1,000 higher education institutes in China that own their share-issuing
hi-tech companies or corporations. The popularization and application of the
cultivation areas for the major product Yunda-120 produced by Science and
Technology Corporation of Yunnan University has approached sixty-seven billion
square meters with its networks of popularization, sales, and service provision
having taken shape. Within such a brief period of time Science and Technology
Corporation of Yunnan University, starting from a research group that had only
a fund of more than ten thousand RMB yuan, has developed into a share-issuing
corporation with a total property in excess of ten billion RMB yuan. Biological
Technology Corporation of Yunnan University is the first enterprise in China
that owns an independent intellectual property right in the field of the single
clone antibody research, and its products of contraceptive test paper, eugenic
test paper, and sterility test paper have been adopted for codifying China’s
national standards therein, thus having filled up the research black hole in
China’s single clone antibody technology. The annual production capacity of the
single clone antibody by Biological Technology Corporation of Yunnan University
has reached the level of more 20 kilograms.
Yunnan University
has a publishing house under its administration and it has so far put out over
two million volumes of various academic works. Yunnan University’s academic
periodical Ideological Frontier (Social Science Version) has obtained the
status of the Kernel National Periodicals in China, and the Academic Journal of
Yunnan University (Natural Science Version) has been judged as one of the
excellent academic journals of the key national universities and colleges in
China. In addition, Yunnan University also publishes its internal paper School
Paper of Yunnan University. Yunnan University also has a high school, a high
school of foreign language and a kindergarten attached to it. The high school
attached to Yunnan University has for more than ten years been among the best
high schools in Kunming City, thus having won a good social reputation.
Yunnan University has for eighty years put out more than seventy thousand graduates in various specialized fields of study, and among these graduates after the founding of the People’s Republic of China more than fifty thousand persons either pursued the education under the formal four-year programs for the undergraduates or pursued the education under the programs for the specialized students, more than 1,300 persons pursued the education under the programs for postgraduates, more than 1,600 graduates have been the overseas students, and more than ten thousand persons studied under the night university and correspondence university programs for adult students. The graduates of Yunnan University enjoy a very high reputation within and outside of Yunnan Province for their mastery of the solid knowledge foundations, strict study attitudes, broad intellectual horizons and pragmatic and endeavoring spirits. They have therefore been readily accepted by the employers in all walks of life in the society. In recent years, in the light of its guiding principles of trying to provide quality services to the society and try to develop a unique academic style of our own, Yunnan University has put forth and practiced the educational concept of achieving students’ all-sided development in which both the adaptability and creativity of the students are unified. Yunnan University has decided on its instructional idea of “To teach is not to teach, and to learn is to create” (Teachers should teach students in such approaches that they would be able to learn on their own soon, and students should try to learn the ability to create something new and better) so as to construct a mode of professional training that takes the educational concept, scope of educational target, curriculums, operational mechanisms, etc. as its major contents. Yunnan University advocates the motto of striving for “Perfection in Moral Integrity, Excellence in Scholarly Attainments, and Greatness in Career Pursuits” for the purpose of creating professionals of extensive learning who are technically capable, skillful and creative, practically adaptable, and morally, intellectually, physically and aesthetically excellent.
Yunnan University
has from the very beginning formed a tradition of attaching a great importance
to its pursuits of scientific research, closely following the international
frontier disciplines and activating the lively academic atmosphere on campus.
Through the exploration efforts by all the generations of scholars in Yunnan
University, the research in the basic disciplinary branches and the
advantageous fields has been strengthened, the scope of research in the new
fields and applied fields has been broadened, and the efforts in the critical
and influential research projects have achieved the optimized integrations.
Meanwhile, Yunnan University has also actively provided its services for the
local economic construction and promoted the incubation, promotion and
application of the scientific research achievements. In the recent five years,
Yunnan University has completed over 500 researches of various categories, 170
of which have been reworded respectively for their achievements in the relevant
fields. There are more than 250 monographic works come off the press and 3,100
research papers published, and Yunnan University has come out to be around the
60th among the Chinese institutions of higher education on the SCI.
In the applied fields, Yunnan University has also achieved a great number of
results of high and new technology, and the BR-120 of Yunnan University has
been put into the category of the special items to be publicized during the 9th
Five-Year Plan period in China.
Yunnan University
Fund is an acting council member of the Fund of Universities and Colleges of
China. Through its development Yunnan University Fund has now held nearly
seventy Chinese and overseas directors, who have provided their financial and
material contributions and constructive ideas. They have also brought many
academic celebrities at home and abroad into contact with Yunnan University
thus having positively promoted the reform, construction and development of
Yunnan University. In the recent five years, Yunnan University has established
different levels of exchange relations with more than 50 institutes of higher
learning and research organizations in more than twenty countries and regions
such as United States, Great Britain, Russia, Japan, Australia, etc, and it has
sent out more than 200 persons to carry out the academic exchanges and cooperative
research abroad and has successfully sponsored more than ten international
academic conferences. Yunnan University is becoming one of the academically
active universities in the Asian and Pacific region.
Principle: Service Rendering and Academic Endeavoring
Maxim: Wisdoms From Many, and Justice for All
Ideals: Lofty and Ambitious, Realistic and Pragmatic, Painstaking,
and Distinguished
Motto: Perfection in Moral Integrity, Excellence in Scholarly
Attainments, and Greatness in Career Pursuits